Welcome to the machine
Today's Question: Assess one of the following concepts in light of either Howard's own examples or other material from this semester: (1) epistemic heterarchy, (2) political redlining, (3) political culture. You might consider one or more of the questions: How does Howard define the concept? How is it used? Is it analytically useful? Does it depend on important assumptions that are not stated? Given what you know about communication technology, does the definition imply a causal relationship that you find credible?
In Philip N. Howard’s text, New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen, he provides an expose of the political culture of the ”hypermedia campaign manager”, and how the values of this particular subset of politicos have changed the tone, discourse, research and funding structure, and actual practice of politics in the last few election cycles. Care should be taken here as Howard’s definition of “political culture” is really focused upon the ideals and values of those who create political discourse these “hypermedia campaign managers”, rather than citizens, consumers or narrowcasting subjects. While Howard notes “ there is no correct or even consensus about the definition of political culture” (p. 54) his project is to reveal how “ their (hypermedia campaign manager’s) choices about an exostructure of media and information management shaped the way the rest of us experience and participate in political life.” (again, p.54)
Howard provides the following description of these campaign managers, they “ … are men under the age of thirty who graduated in political science and love being involved in the new economy. More important, most have worked with one another on projects or appeared together in conference panels. They regularly met for happy hour, and several marriages within the community help to solidify identity”. (p. 47) Consumer models, the amassing of data shadows, and the collection and parsing of information culled from consumer credit card companies drive the campaign manager’s attitudes towards the citizen/consumer. They believe that “citizens are political and genuinely interested in specific issues that affect them” (p. 46) and these managers assume that the direct, digital democracy is superior to representational democracy as it removes any possibility of miscommunication, or misintereptation of the message that their political masters wish to project to sway public opinion. Is this really a “better” form of democracy? Cannot people acknowledge that they might not have a personal stake in an issue, or even vote against their own “best” interest? Since when is “public opinion” the normative equal of “informed consent” to be governed or even democracy itself?
All of which leads me to my frustration with the way that Howard has approached this book- Yes this is critically important subject matter, but by “pulling back the curtain” on the current trends of contemporary campaign management in the form of an expose, he has framed the debate in particularly stilted terms. If you are troubled or angered by the narrowcasting that is occurring, Howard implies that you are either misinformed or naïve about the current trends in campaign fundraising and management. Troubled by the deep implications that these trends have for our democracy, and notions of citizenship? Well, isn’t that quaint. The fact that over half of the eligible public does not vote can be explained by the campaign managers by the fact that they are still working on refining their profiling metrics or that the consumers do not see the national elections as holding any aspect of self interest, or by a cynic as that these citizens, to use Price’s terminology “have left the market.” Regardless the consequences are the same…